From Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, with illustrations by John Tenniel. Macmillan and Co, London, 1898.

The roll call is impressive – Lewis Carroll, Kenneth Grahame, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, William Horwood, Mary Hoffman, Philip Pullman, all writers who have lived (or are living) in Oxford and all of whom have brought us great literary treasure.

So it’s fitting then that Oxford is to become the home to a new museum of story and storytelling, to open in 2014.

The virtual Story Museum is to become tangible, thanks to an anonymous benefactor and £2.5 million.

Pullman, along with Michael Morpurgo and Jacqueline Wilson, will become patron of the new Museum:

The Story Museum will be a wonderful gift from Oxford, where so many stories have begun, to the whole world,” Pullman said. “The whole atmosphere of the city is rich with fantasy. Indeed, the very idea of having a museum devoted to story is itself such a fantastical notion than no other city in the world could have given birth to it.

More here.

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Claudette Colvin

The winners of the National Book Awards (US) were announced earlier today, with the winner for Young People’s Literature going to Phillip Hoose for Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice.

We may or may not see this important, true story published here in Australia, but let’s hope we do. It tells of a little-known teenager who stood up for what she believed in during the dark days of the 1950s and the fledgling Civil Rights movement.

A week or so ago, Monica Edinger posted in her blog about a book event where Phillip Hoose spoke about the making of the book and where Claudette Colvin also told her story.  She was reminded of her father’s brush with Rosa Parks, a more famous Civil Rights figure of the time, in Montgomery, Alabama. Here is his story.

Image of Claudette Colvin used under Creative Commons licence

Earlier this month, in this post, we congratulated all the Australian authors who had been nominated. The list that these were extrapolated from is here. Nominations only. That was clear enough and reason enough to rejoice. There was no Margo, no Melina.  We did wonder, but ours is not to reason why.

Now this undated list has popped up, which appears to be the final goods, and yea, both appear on it. Good news indeed. So does Juliet Marillier, but we’ve lost all the other Aussies we were so warmly applauding only 10 days ago. No Michelle Cooper, no Alison Goodman, no Steven Herrick, no Catherine Jinks, no Justine Larbalestier, no Shaun Tan.

So congratulations Margo, Melina and Juliet – wonderful news, but why weren’t you on the original list of nominations? And commiserations to all who didn’t make the final cut.

Ah, awards. Can’t please everyone.

Have you read it yet? No? Really, you must.

Here’s our Trailer Tuesday feature from a few weeks ago. Add the Booktrust to the list of awards. As The Guardian says, Gaiman is now buried under awards.

And while we are on things Gaiman, here’s two-for-the price-of one, with Terry Pratchett thrown in for good measure. Alas the free audio download is not for us down under, but the interviews with the voices behind the Gaiman / Pratchett audio readings give us a different perspective on their work.

Our other posts about this award, including links to other 2009 acceptance speeches, can be found here.

Now Amra Pajalic, author of The Good Daughter, is auctioning her services to assess an unpublished manuscript, with a starting bid of $250.  All proceeds will go to the Indigenous Literacy Project.

Here’s why Amra has decided to do this.

It’s probably too early to have any NaNoWriMo manuscripts looked at, but if you have something else tucked away, or know someone who does, please spread the word. It’s for a good cause.

The auction closes on 27 November.

And thanks to Simmone Howell for letting us know.

The publishers have tagged this one ‘adult’ so it hasn’t been marketed to teens, although it has lots of YA-relevant themes. Here is the Fiction Focus review, too.

Dig deeper

The author

• The Siobhan Dowd Trust
• Background on Siobhan Dowd, from the CILIP Carnegie Medal website
• Wikipedia article, with further work required, especially the verification of citations
• Timeline including published works, from NY State Literary Tree
• Obituary – The Guardian
• Obituary – The Independent
• Obituary – The Telegraph

The text

• Extract – Chapter One
• Book Talk (mp3) from Nancy Keane’s Book Talks Quick and Simple blog
• Teacher’s pack (57 pages) by Claire Austin-Macrae, from Oxford University Press. [Word Document]
• Reading notes from Children’s Books Ireland
• Summary and ideas for the classroom from Bright Hub
• Wikipedia entry for Bog Child

Reviews

• Fiction Focus
• The Guardian
• Times Online
• Booktrust UK
• Scottish Book Trust

Articles and interviews

• Guardian article on winning the Carnegie Medal posthumously for Bog Child
• Interview with Siobhan Dowd after winning the Branford Boase award for A Swift Pure Cry (WriteAway)
• Booktrust interview (also after winning Branford Boase award)
• A 1991 interview in which Siobhan Dowd talks about her work with PEN, the writer’s organisation that speaks out for human rights

Awards for Bog Child

• Winner CILIP Carnegie Medal 2009 (UK). Acceptance speech by Siobhan Dowd’s sisters and publisher David Fickling (video)
• Winner CBI Bisto Book of the Year 2009 (Ireland)
• Nominee – Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best YA Novel 2008 (Mystery Writers of America)
• Kirkus Review Best YA Books List 2008
• Publishers Weekly Best Children’s Books of the Year list 2008
• Shortlist Guardian Children’s Fiction Book of the Year 2008
• Longlist Manchester Book Award 2008

The other books and their awards

A Swift Pure Cry (2006)

• Winner Eilís Dillon Award for first-time children’s author 2006/2007
• Winner Branford Boase Award 2007
• Shortlist Carnegie Medal 2007
• Shortlist Booktrust Teenage Prize 2006
• Shortlist Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize 2007
• Longlist Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize 2006

The London Eye Mystery (2007)

• Winner NASEN/TES Special Educational Needs Children’s Book Award 2007
• Winner CBI Bisto Book of the Year 2008
• Longlist Carnegie Medal 2008
• Shortlist Red House Children’s Book Award 2008
• Shortlist Sheffield Children’s Book Award 2008

Solace of the Road (2009)

• Shortlist Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize 2009

Read more

• The Troubles : Timeline from History on the Net
• Hunger Strikes. 25 years after the events, the BBC reviews the issues, the people and the Maze Prison
• The diary of Bobby Sands
• Bodies of the Bogs (from the Archaeological Society of America)

In memory of Alison Lawrence: friend, colleague and valued Fiction Focus reviewer

11 November 2009

• Audience. To whom is the reviewer accountable? Author?  Publisher? Readers? All of the above? None of the above? If for a print journal, then the scope of the publication will be clear, but the rise of reviewing blogs has made the water murky.
• Balance. Negativity for its own sake or to show how clever the reviewer is for noticing a problem is not helpful.  As one person said if only a small proportion of the book is unsatisfactory for whatever reason but the majority of the review is about pointing this out, that’s unfair to the book.
• Close reading. Some reviewers read a book three or four times before submitting a review and only then after rereading and revising it.  The author deserves slow, considered engagement: (paraphrased) ‘a fast food opinion isn’t fair to a slowly cooked book’.

And, we are urged to remember, it’s much harder to write a book than review one.

It feels as if this thread has arisen spontaneously so it might not be archived on the website as one of its formal discussion topics, but you can certainly access the email discussion if you sign up to receive posts. Posts from ccbc-net are generally considered and therefore worth receiving.

Sir William Blake Richmond: Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894. Oil on canvas, 1886

The works of Robert Louis Stevenson from collections in Edinburgh and the United States have been digitised and made available for all to read online.

A newly launched website uses turn-the-page technology to bring the famous titles such as Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde to our screens, but there is much more besides, including lesser known novels and a lovely 1895 Art Nouveau edition of A Child’s Garden of Verses.

Everything you could possibly want to know about Stevenson’s life and works, including a gallery of never-before-seen images, is on the site, which has been developed by Edinburgh Napier University.

The Robert Louis Stevenson website went live yesterday to mark the 159th anniversary of Stevenson’s birth.

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